Magnus and all MDiscuss I have read Magnus essay and first of all I will express my admiration for such an task. My excerpts from the essay are not continuous something that may be a bit confusing. My fault of course.
Magnus begins with an "advice" > Remember to not mention objects when talking about levels, but only > how objects interact with each other, i.e. use the experience point of > view. The inorganic level is one plane of existence, i.e. one way in > which objects interact. The biological level is a completely and > discretely different way in which objects interact, i.e. another plane > of existence. After discarding the Subject/Object distinction as the most fundamental split it goes without saying that we are not supposed to mention objects, but why "object interaction"? Isn't it supposed to be "quality pattern interaction"? > To continue, the inorganic plane of existence is the type of > interaction described by physics. To be exact the static intellectual level (by its scientific discipline "physics") does not know the MOQ and its levels, it's business is "nature". And I think some wrong turn is taken by equalizing the Q levels and the scientific disciplines: The inorganic and biological levels may seem straightforward, but with the social trouble starts, it does not fit the scientific counterpart and at the intellectual things go completely haywire, the 4th. level is SOM and consequently does not exist to/for science. > In this level, we see interactions such as gravity, electromagnetism > etc. Remember that these types of interactions are not objects, but > ways in which objects can interact, or in MoQ terms, types of quality > events. "Quality events" are not mentioned in LILA, but this looks fine. "Interaction" is IMO the inorganic level's "expression", a term you provided long ago. > As mentioned above, the biological plane of existence contains > interactions such as taste, smell and touch. "Interaction such as taste"? If you by this mean a particular molecule entering the nose and is sensed as a particular smell, OK Sensing is the 2nd. level's value of transforming inorganic patterns into biological sense patterns. > I often use the dimensional metaphor to describe the levels. If you > could assign a value to each inorganic quality event, you could then > plot those values along, for example, an x-axis. Different inorganic > quality events are then pretty easy to compare, and if they are the > same type of inorganic quality event, for example weight, you can > easily compare them or use them to calculate different things about > the objects that were involved in the quality event. Your dimensional example is perfect one way seen, you won't find taste or smell in a chemical formula, or colors in a electromagnetic frequency, but my reservation is that a spatial dimension did not start in another dimension thus it violates the "higher level out of the lower" tenet. Pirsig speaks (for instance) about carbon as the inorganic building block so at some point it was neither dead nor alive - or both. Besides I can't see how the dimensional view will prevent discussion .. about what dimension this or that belongs to > First off, it's pretty easy to realize that smell does depend on > matter, in this case gaseous matter. A thing that smells can't smell > forever. As it smells, parts of the thing evaporates into the air and > a nose nearby can detect it. We can also see that things that smells > much evaporates much of itself, either by being transformed in some > kind of biological rotting process, or by simply sending off pieces of > itself until it vanishes. Other things, such as metal, don't smell > much, if at all. Starting to pick nits. A particular molecular configuration is (experienced as) a particular smell by an organism and this relationship neither evaporates or diminishes. That a dead organism decomposes and gives off certain odors that stops when the process is complete is another matter. > The MoQ tells us that the big bang was a dynamic event, which created > space, time and gravity. But what did the universe right after the big > bang exist of apart from that? For example, it seems that each > particle in this quantum level below the atomic level has some sort of > identity. It's usually called "thisness" and is used to explain why > seemingly identical particles are still able to be unique. Some people > have suggested that Does the MOQ say anything about the Big Bang at all? Anyway that's a scientific theory and as said in the first comment the MOQ just says that the inorganic level is DQ's first creation. Physics is not relevant outside physics i.e. outside intellect. > Either way, I think science has a lot to learn from the MoQ in the > quantum level. The insight that different fields of science are really > different metaphysical levels, and as such, different planes of > existence, should be investigated much further. Perhaps some of these > level borders, i.e. borders between different scientific fields, have > been very thoroughly investigated. Here's where we part company and what has paralyzed the MOQ, namely the belief that the scientific fields corresponds to the Q levels. The social level falls outside "sociology's" field and the intellectual level - which is SOM itself - has definitely no place in science. Hence the gross misinterpretations of the latter and your own weird social notion . > This distinction is much more visible on the macro scale when > involving larger, such as human, societies. Here the danger of applying science to the 3rd. level is shown. The social level has little to do with "sociology", but with mankind achieving a notion of existence transcending the biological reality and the ensuing mythologies. (that intellect in its time transcended. ZAMM) > Most, if not all, of the examples Pirsig lists in Lila involves human > societies. For example, biological values are things like greed and > lust, To pick more nits, "greed" is an emotion i.e. a social pattern; striving after wealth and fame. Hunger however is biology (a sensation) The same goes for "lust", the pure sexual urge is biology, while society creates lust. > while social values are family, church and government. But what is > important to note is that these examples work exactly like their > smaller counterparts. Greed on the micro scale would be when a stronger > molecule devours a smaller one; the result is an even stronger molecule > at the expense of the smaller. This is a bit mysterious. "..a stronger molecule devours a smaller" what's that? Molecules exist in countless fashions in an organism without devouring each other except as cancer or in the digestive tract, but at this plane no greed (emotion) is involved. Not even hunger which belongs to the biological level > Lust is a more equal attraction between two molecules, sometimes > resulting in the social institution called family. "Molecule" is that an organism? And "attraction" the sexual act? And is it a family when two molecules chemically combine? > Take for example a small multicellular animal. Social value makes sure > the animal stays viable, i.e. works 'as a whole', even if it's changed > slightly between every generation. Social value at work before the social level? It's not social value that keeps an organism "viable", it only keep Magnus going ;-). End of part 1 Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
